Defense

The U.S. Army is looking for companies that can manufacture the new XM1208 155mm cluster shell — and a number of them. The goal, according to a market survey published Nov. 20, is to find contractors who can manufacture up to 30,000 XM1208 rounds per year. The U.S. is currently producing 40,000 artillery shells per month, as America and Europe struggle to ramp up production of howitzer…

A new lab is hoping to use generative AI to enhance defense wargaming. The goal of the new GenWar lab, scheduled to open in 2026 at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, is to improve tabletop exercises by harnessing the speed and user-friendliness of large language models, or LLMs, which include popular chatbots such as ChatGPT. By accessing AI during an exercise…

VILNIUS, Lithuania — Less than 200 kilometers from Belarus and about 300 kilometers from Russia, a sleek all-white Lithuanian drone factory with 40 employees works around the clock, sending hundreds of drones to Ukraine. Granta Autonomy’s latest innovation is its vertical take-off and landing X-Wing loitering munition, which was unveiled this year and has already been tested by Ukraine, with…

The number of major accidents involving military aircraft spiked in 2024, internal Pentagon figures show, and a series of high-profile aviation mishaps with deaths and the loss of aircraft in 2025 suggest the disturbing trend may be continuing. Across the military, the rate of severe accidents per 100,000 flight hours rose 55% in the 2024 budget year compared with four years earlier. The Marine…